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User blog:DBinitiate/What about those 7 Yggdrasil
As you all are aware of, Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millenium Girl mentions there are seven Yggdrasil. Products of a project that was meant to purify the land of the corruption that mankind had brought unto it. With the addition of Etrian Odyssey V we have reached seven Yggdrasil, counting all mentions among the main five games, the two remakes, and spin-off title. However. Some things have been bugging me. Yggdrasil seems to not always be defined the same way... Or does it? So let's put together what we know about the various Yggdrasil and see where we land. Etria's great labyrinth: The Yggdrasil Labyrinth What we know about Yggdrasil in Etrian Odyssey is that it created a gigantic labyrinth around itself. It's unknown whether the labyrinth is the tree itself or not, but it seems rather unlikely. Furthermore, we know that Yggdrasil can be fused with a living being, seeing how Visil fused himself with it in order to oversee its completion. We also know that Yggdrasil has a core in which it stores the corruption it absorbs. What is more important to note to this Yggdrasil is that remnants of the previous world lie far underneath the present world. How deep these remnants lie is not exactly known, though I can make a guess based on the fifth stratum. Since it's obvious the stratum is based on the district of Shinjuku, I took the tallest building in Shinjuku when the game came out: the Shinjuku Park Tower. It stands at 235 meters (771 feet) tall. Since I don't think it would be useful for something that is meant to purify the earth to be placed several hunder feet above the ground, the bottom floor of the stratum is also the ground floor of this building. This would make every floor in the fifth stratum either be 235/5 = 47 meters tall, or have that much between each of them. Adding the twenty floors above Lost Shinjuku, though the first floor is where the present "above ground" is, it would place the fifth stratum about 900 meters below the surface. Of course, this does assume that every floor is equally tall. High-Lagaard's towering tree: Yggdrasil Etrian Odyssey II takes Yggdrasil into a different direction. Instead of going down into a labyrinth, the labyrinth is situated around the tree and goes up. More importantly, it's shown that remnants of the ancient world are found not underneath the tree, but rather in the sky above it. A giant floating fortress containing machines that we find very common in the real world. (read: the soup dispensers in Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold) We also know from Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold that there's a core here as well, hidden in an ancient place at the bottom of a ravine. With the fact that this structure is at the bottom of the ravine, I find it acceptable to assume that this ravine is about as deep as the entire Yggdrasil Labyrinth of the first game, which would place the core at about the same level of the core in the first game. Armoroad's otherworldly protector: Yggdrasil Etrian Odyssey III is the oddest one out, sporting a tree from outer space (or so it claims). Besides those claims, what's most notable about this situation is that the land around the tree has not changed since it got there. It sunk part of Armoroad to the bottom of the sea, which means that where the tree stands right now is where it has always stood. Furthermore, it gifted technology to the people of Armoroad that would fight the "Deep Ones". There's no evidence of an "ancient world" in Etrian Odyssey III, as everything that is found in the game got there when Yggdrasil came to the world. This would likely mean that this Yggdrasil is unrelated to the first two games' Yggdrasil. Something that does need to be pointed out here is that Yggdrasil has the ability to "speak" to people. Tharsis' fabled destination: Yggdrasil Etrian Odyssey IV shows once again an Yggdrasil that seems to be much, much younger than the first two Yggdrasil. First piece of evidence is how the labyrinths are all only three floors deep, though the exact depth is not known since they are all connected to the fifth labyrinth, which only has a single floor. The second piece is that the place where everyone would hide until Yggdrasil had done its job is still above ground and relatively undisturbed by nature, despite the long time it had been since Yggdrasil had been created. The mechanisms in this sixth stratum are, just like before, unfamiliar to the current civilizations. Yggdrasil is able to speak here as well, though it's only through the Medium that it can do so. On the other hand, it's once again shown that Yggdrasil can fuse with a human being. What bugs me about the civilization that has built up around Yggdrasil is that they have figured out the way to fly, but don't have planes. This makes me think that this civilization is not the same as the original civilization that built Yggdrasil. Aslarga's amber giant: Yggdrasil Etrian Mystery Dungeon solidified the connecting universe of the Etrian Odyssey games by having a scientist write stories about each previous installment. The Yggdrasil in this game is as different from the others as Etrian Odyssey III's is. One thing it does have in common with some of the other trees is its ability to speak to people, though once again through the use a sort of medium. However, unlike any of the other games, it's unknown whether this Yggdrasil was ever meant to purify the land. All it appeared to be there for was the imprisonment of Muspell's people. Arcadia's tree of peace: Yggdrasil Since Etrian Odyssey V is not released outside of Japan, it's unknown to me what the story behind this Yggdrasil is. However, after listening to music from the game, there's a high chance that the final stratum, the sixth stratum, is located in outer space. This makes me think that this Yggdrasil may have been planted there in the same way that the Yggdrasil of Etrian Odyssey III got to the world. Gotham's destroyed tree: Yggdrasil As it has been told in Etrian Odyssey Untold, there was supposed to be a tree near a place called Gotham, but a Gungnir unit destroyed it. Closing thoughts All in all, I agree with the trees in Etrian Odyssey 1, 2, and 4 being linked to the Yggdrasil Project, but the tree in 3 is much too different from it. Similarly, the tree in Etrian Mystery Dungeon is very different from any of the three that are logically linked to the project. Even if this tree AND the tree in Etrian Odyssey V are linked to the project, there still should be one more around. Unless Atlus decides to rewrite the tree of Etrian Odyssey 3 when they remake that game... Category:Blog posts